Customer Reviews

Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This amazing book allows one to learn more about both orchestras and leadership. When I first approached this book, I was skeptical. But, over this relatively short book (only a little over a hundred pages), my concerns were all raised and addressed.

While this book did cover much that I had learned elsewhere, it did give me a new appreciation for some of that, and went on to present some ideas that were new to me. My favorite lesson was that, as a conductor does in an orchestra, a business leader has a perspective that is fundamentally different from those he leads. This is not only due to his looking in a different direction, but also because he hears things differently. Many times as a leader, I had not realized this and expected those whom I led to see what I saw. This book has definitely improved my leadership skills.

Sad! I really wanted to like this book, as listening truly IS such an important and often-overlooked aspect of leadership. However, Maestro was just...boring! The story - even more so than other personal development parables - was cheesy. The writing was average, if not a bit below. It didn't keep my attention nor clearly point out its lessons.

Is listening an important part of leadership? An important part of ANY type of business? You bet. Is reading Maestro an entertaining way to learn that lesson? Zzzz...

Some business lessons are better taught by story than rigorous facts and analysis.

We learned about change and how to prepare and cope with it in Who Moved My Cheese? The same was done in John Kotter's Our Iceberg is Melting.

And now, conductor, Roger Nierenberg explores leadership in a new business fable to add to the list, Maestro.

In Nierenberg's parable, we follow a business executive struggling to motivate his team to work together so they might stop their business' sinking ship.

The executive befriends an orchestra conductor who allows the executive to sit within the orchestra during rehearsals. And it's from that seat that the executive soon learns the value that listening has on leadership.

For instance, from the violin section, one may not understand what the double basses are hearing, or how it may impact how they play. In the same way, one business division may be working in a silo -- not considering its impact on the rest of the company.

And so by learning how a large and diverse orchestra works so flawlessly, the executive finds leadership principles to apply to his own career.

Seeing that it's a parable, it's a bit difficult to select some quick-meaning quotes, but here's a few of my favorites:
"...a strong vision can lead people away from focusing on their part alone toward being aware of the whole. The vision should be lofty enough to stir and challenge people. If it's too limited, then people will feel underutilized and uninspired."

"Tasks that might have previously seemed routine now acquire meaning and beauty. While they are doing their jobs, they're always thinking of the grand vision."

"I hadn't realized that a micromanager's core problem is not too much leadership, but rather too little. His vision and strategy are withheld or never explained."

"A leader must commit to that which has not yet happened. Otherwise you are not really leading; in fact, you are actually following."

"What energizes people is the leader's act of committing to what is possible."
And interestingly enough, Nierenberg believes in the view from the conductor's podium, or next to a violinist, so much he's changing corporations one at a time in his Music Paradigm program.

The Music Paradigm is essentially a living, interactive example of the book, Maestro. Available to corporations of varying sizes, Nierenberg seats executives within his orchestra and leads them through a series of exercises with the musicians in order to demonstrate the truth about leadership and a functioning organization.

Maestro may be what your organization needs to get 'on the same page.' It's a very short and quick read and may do wonders to help departments within the same company understand how very important it is to not only work together, but harmoniously and productively.

Although this is the third parable-style management book that I've read recently, it really struck a note with me. The maestro does not actually play any instrument but he is the one who pulls it altogether. The maestro's job is to ensure that everyone is listening to each other, that the horns aren't outplaying the woodwinds or strings, that the musicians "own" the music, and then to listen to the results, make the tweaks, and to inspire the final outstanding performance. This is not unlike most business organizations. We've all worked in situations where the department that squawks the loudest is not necessarily the most important or at least not the current priority. Leading is a matter of cajoling, providing feedback (both positive and negative) and inspiring people to perform their best. Management is basically a method of getting things done. Good managers are not necessarily good leaders. This book makes that distinction clear.

My particularly favorite chapters were: Lead, Don't Cheerlead - Don't Oversee Every Note - and Hear the Clarinet. Even if you are not a musician or in the music world, I would recommend this book for anyone interested in developing leadership qualities.

The scene is set with the narrator, the head of a company in a meeting with several department heads, discussing recent failures. Finance, sales, and production blame each other for losses. With this discussion heavy on his mind, the narrator goes home during his daughter's violin lesson and overhears the violin teacher telling the girl about the fantastic new orchestra director he is now working under. The violinist invites the CEO to a rehearsal, and fascination to how well an orchestra holds together under the director's baton grows into deep understanding of much more than music. The dangers of micromanagement, wrong perspectives, and not listening properly are spelled out in an interesting series of lessons during subsequent rehearsals. The CEO is able to present a new dimension of working as a productive team to 250 employees in a dramatic way.

As a musician, I like the book in its obvious references to music and musicianship. Sometimes, I wondered if non-musicians would "get it", though it is written in a very easy to read style. Mostly I had to think about my principal, a micromanager, who I would very much like to read it! Written by a musician, but by someone who is giving himself the position of an industrialist, I have to think that the leader of any type of team or business could benefit by the metaphors constantly brought up to make all work "in perfect harmony". It spells out the importance of the individual, and how a leader can bring out the best cooperation while bringing out the innovative ideas of others.

This parable is about a frustrated manager, challenged by direct reports who never seem to be on the same page as one another, who learns how to be an effective leader by modeling an orchestra's conductor. An orchestra is a fitting metaphor for a business unit. Each individual musician in an orchestra may be highly-trained, a world-class performer in her own right, but unless the individual musicians work together, and unless the sections of the orchestra work together, the orchestra's performance will be less than spectacular. In Maestro, the author shows how a manager can optimize performance by really listening to her subordinates, allowing the subordinates to see things from others' perspectives, and minimizing direction.

After a frustrating day at work, the manager turns to his daughter's violin instructor for advice. The violin teacher invites the manager to sit in on several orchestra rehearsals. The manager first sits in the viola section, then moves to other sections, eventually sitting on the podium. By learning to listen from the perspective of many different positions, the manager better understands the leader's role in getting the team to work together. What is perceptible from the leader's chair (the podium) is not generally perceptible from the subordinate's (individual musician's) chair. When leaders criticize individuals for something they have no way of being aware of, the individuals disengage from the team. In general, only the leader has the unique perspective of how all of the parts fit together into the whole --

Some of the specific situations described were interesting -- what happens if the entire orchestra tunes a quarter-step low? What happens if the individual musicians are allowed to use their own bowings? The orchestra provides a superb setting for showing the need to work together, to be sensitive to what folks in the other sections are doing. The conductor's role is to help the musicians solve problems, coordinate when the problems aren't always visible to the individual performers. Less is more.

Although the parable was interesting, it began to lose steam about halfway through the book. Most of the lessons (listen carefully, things sound different depending on where you're sitting) come through pretty early in the book and the last half of the book seems like one too many repeat. Overall, though, an interesting read with interesting principles.

I received this book as a gift for the holidays. As many of the other reviewers have pointed out this book is written in fable form with a hypothetical executive encountering issues that are suddenly paralleled by a personal experience (in this case a chance encounter with a conductor) that solves all his problems.

The book is relatively short (118 pages) and flies by based on the fact that it is written in fable format. The first 20 pages are interesting as the scene is set and the concept of the maestro is introduced, and I found myself hoping this book would introduce some new topic that hasn't already been covered in several other similar books. Unfortunately it does not introduce anything new.

There are some nice sounding quotes (see other reviews for examples) and the way the story is told is interesting. If you have only read a limited number of leadership books written in the fable format than I would recommend this - however if you have read more than 4 or 5 then I suggest you pass as nothing new is introduced.

Ho hum. If you've read one of those popular business books featuring an executive facing a serious problem at work who, always unexpectedly, finds inspiration from cheese, fish, or in this case an orchestral conductor, you've read them all.

The ghostwriter for this book did no favors for Maestro Nierenberg. This book has the same earnest but bland tone, the same wooden dialog, and the same dramatic turnaround at the end of the book as so many other short business books published these days.

So it was a great surprise near the end of the book to find myself fascinated and engaged by the description of the conductor giving what is essentially a master class in conducting. He coaches four student conductors at a music conservatory and offers interesting commentary on their shortcomings and useful suggestions for improvement. This part of the book is suddenly engaging, interesting, and reveals fascinating insights into how orchestral symphonies work and what the role of the conductor is. And these insights seem useful to those of us working in business settings.

I only wish that the author had devoted more of the book to this interesting material and had skipped the rest of it. I think the author should write another book concentrating on this aspect of his teaching. That's a book, unlike this one, that I would enjoy reading.

Nierenberg's story brings to the forefront all the things we should do as managers, the attitudes and intentions underwhich they should be considered, the mistakes we are tempted to make, and the reasons behind encouraging others to own what is theirs. He does this by exposing the simplest truths - ideas that run against the current of mainstream thinking. A quick, enjoyable read offering a profound paradigm shift in thinking.

This book was received in excellent condition well within the time frame I was told. The book is inspiring, lively, motivating and well-written. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.